What's It About?

One day, Tougetsu Umidori suddenly receives a mysterious request from Nara Yoshino, a classmate with whom she is rather close. Little does she know, however, that this is only the beginning of a series of bizarre events. Soon after, an enigmatic girl in a cat hoodie shows up at Umidori's house, calling herself “BS.” Thanks to her, all manner of strange things happen, including toilet borrowing, betrayal, threats, a grapple for freedom, and finally a desperate plea for mercy. Once everything is over, this strange new girl asks: “Hey, will you kill the lies with me?” And without knowing why, Umidori joins in on her quest.

The BS Situation of Tougetsu Umidori has art by Miso Ameiro, original story by Kaeru Ryouseirui, and character design by Natsuki Amashiro. The English translation is by Andrew Cunningham, and the lettering is by Chris Burgener. Published by Yen Press (May 27, 2025). Rated 16+.

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Is It Worth Reading?

MrAJCosplay
Rating:

Have you ever had a series that makes you ask yourself “What is this even about?” every five pages? That is the best way I can explain The BS Situation of Tougetsu Umidori, because after finishing the first volume, I am still unsure what I just read. I mean this in both a positive and negative way. On the positive side, I think it's worth celebrating when a series can legitimately catch you off guard in a seemingly natural way. This is a very dialogue-heavy story, and while it becomes overwhelming after a certain point, I admit that I didn't expect the random shifts that some of these conversations took. Within the book's first half, we go from discussing stolen pencils to aliens who are unable to tell the truth. We are bombarded with a lot of wordplay and different logical fallacies, which makes me want to go back and check if there were any logical inconsistencies with how the characters were written or how they presented themselves.

That is not an easy thing to do. I want to praise the story for keeping me on my toes about what I was going to tune into next. The problem is that it becomes a tough story to recommend in retrospect. As an experience, it can be fun to indulge in conversations and wordplay like this. But as a satisfying narrative, that becomes a different story. I guess the tone is in the title, a lot of these conversations can amount to bullshit, especially when we go from one topic to another. But the story isn't structured like a gag series. There is a narrative progression, but it also doesn't feel like we are going anywhere meaningful with it. It's like the difference between driving up the hill on a straight road versus zigzagging back and forth on the freeway. The latter has the potential to leave me far more exhausted and scatterbrained than the former, even if the former is the safe option.

I want to recommend this book on just how strange it is. We have aliens, mystery-solving, yandere stalker behavior, potential yuri, and some sci-fi shenanigans. These are all good things on paper, but the story doesn't execute them in any way that you would probably think. This would probably get a soft recommendation from me, not because this is a groundbreaking story, but rather because I do feel that a certain level of bullshit needs to be read to be understood.

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Disclosure: Kadokawa World Entertainment (KWE), a wholly owned subsidiary of Kadokawa Corporation, is the majority owner of Anime News Network, LLC. Yen Press, BookWalker Global, and J-Novel Club are subsidiaries of KWE.